The Sad Life of Grima Wormtongue
by Drucilla
Summary: A brief vignette into the life (and the death) of Grima Wormtongue, starting from his last days at Edoras. Completed. Please read and review.
1. Edoras

Disclaimer: Not mine. Tolkien's. And many, many thanks to Brad Dourif for creating such a wonderful Grima!   
  
  
  
This one's for you, April-chan.   
  
  
  
  
She was making that drink again when he entered, quietly, as was his fashion, and unobtrusively. Anyone else, even the ever-watchful White Lady, would not have heard him, but she knew every nook and cranny of her room and marked his entrance as it disturbed the air. She said nothing, though; instead she merely waited for the kettle to begin hissing, and then plucked down two mugs and poured them in, adding a generous heaping of leaves and powders to the hot water. Milk, he noted, a luxury in these times, went into the one she turned and passed to him.   
  
"It's late," she said quietly, turning in her chair to face him and cupping her drink in both hands to warm them. He stood in front of her for a bit, holding the warm drink and contemplating flight. "Oh, do sit down. If you were going to leave you'd have done it before I gave you your cup." He sat down. She always had had the uncanny way of speaking his thoughts before he'd realized he'd thought them.   
  
"I had thought you would be asleep," was all he could think to say. He knew her better than that, though, and she knew he knew her better. He took a sip of the drink to cover the moment. It was warm, almost uncomfortably so. He was so used to being cold.   
  
Cold and uncomfortable. Born in the normal fashion, he had been hale and hearty for a whole fortnight before his body had betrayed him, catching the fever that left him on the brink of death for two years. He had been abandoned by his family, at least so he presumed, for who would want such a deathly child in their midst? Raised and passed from kind hand to kind hand until he had grown into boyhood, crooked and pale and most often cold and shaking. Boy had grown to man, still no better liked, often viewed with suspicion as a possible plague carrier, or at the very least someone whose seeming was so foul as to not warrent company.   
  
Women and men alike shunned and abused him. He had no idea why this one was so different; perhaps she, too, had been abandoned. He knew little of how she came to lose her sight, except that it had been in the grip of a fever. This he could understand. Yet she seemed not to suffer from her lack of vision, acquiring a sort of foresight to compensate. She always seemed to anticipate his presence, at any rate. "You knew I was coming?"   
  
"I thought to make some chai in case you were wandering the halls, as is your usual habit." She said it patiently, as though they hadn't had this conversation a dozen times before. She leaned back in her chair, almost curling her feet under her heavy skirts to warm them, although it was warm enough in the small room.   
  
Despite the gloomy interior of the rest of the keep, despite the fact that the difference didn't matter, her room was somehow warmer and better lit than any other room. Torches lit every corner, and tapestries woven with golden threads caught and reflected the light. In addition to that, though, they kept the room warm, as did the fire she always had roaring in the fireplace. He still didn't understand how or why she did it, any of it, all of it. The floor was sunk in carpets so that his feet made no sound when he entered, but also they warmed them... a sensation almost entirely unknown in the great stone edifice. Everywhere in this room he was insulated, warmed, and lit. It was at odds with everything else he had known in his life, and yet he came here, night after night after night.   
  
"Thank you," he said, at a loss for anything else. She smiled a little, a faded smile that nonetheless seemed to brighten the room and light up her unfocused, pale blue eyes.   
  
"You are most welcome, always, as well you should know." She laughed and took a sip of her drink, so disconcerting yet so tempting at the same time. Then she paused in the act of setting her cup down. "Something is troubling you... I can hear it in your breath. Have your two lords come to odds at last?"   
  
The words echoed.   
  
Have your two lords come to odds at last?   
  
He startled, staring at her empty eyes with his own sunken yet amazed ones. How had she known... could she know? What had he done, what had he said that had told her? Had someone else told her? Who guessed... was it Eomer? That dull-witted lackey... had he somehow deduced from his half-formed suspicions and told her? He forced himself to calm; perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps she was making some esoteric and twisting comment that was innocent despite the seeming shrewdness. "My... two lords?"   
  
"Come, Grima, you have never taken me for a fool, do not begin to treat me as one now. Your king, Theoden, and your lord, Saruman. What goes on between you and them that troubles you now?"   
  
She did know. His blood chilled, though some would have said it was ice that coursed through his veins already. He felt himself gaping like a landed fish. "How... how do you know?"   
  
"I hear whispers, names come to me on the wind, and people will say things around a nameless, silent woman, as though lack of speech also denoted a lack of hearing. Although I only suspected until you confirmed just now that there was indeed something to know."   
  
Grima looked shamefaced and irritated with himself all at the same time. It was one of the oldest tricks, inducing a confession in a man by pretending to knowledge one did not have. He should have known better. He hung his head and sighed heavily. "You have my life in your hands, then, for Theoden-king," and he spoke the title mockingly, "may be weak, but his men of Riddenmark and the bratling Eomer's Rohirrim would have my head from my shoulders before the last word left your lips."   
  
"Well, then," she said, more crisply than he would have thought the conversation warrented, "It is fortunate that I have not told them, is it not?"   
  
Grima jerked his head up, stared at her, agape. "Then why...?"   
  
She wrinkled her delicate nose. "Oh, don't be ridiculous. I don't approve in the slightest of what you've done, selling your soul for the slightest graspings of approval and power. But I also do not approve of hounding a man to fear and death. And besides, Eomer and the Riddenmark are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves." Left unspoken was the thought that he was not, a sentiment that he would have objected to a few minutes earlier.   
  
Without a single idea in his head of what to do next, Grima sat there, staring at the woman who was calmly sipping at her hot drink, as though they were speaking of the weather or the next year's crops.   
  
"Grima," she said, and he started almost in fright. "Grima," she said again, more gently. "Your chai will get cold."   
  
Slowly, he raised the cups to his lips, almost half afraid she had hidden some sort of poison in it. The drink was as sweet as ever, usually delicious and warm, but tonight it gave very little comfort. He watched her as a man might watch a snake reared to strike; an odd position, considering how often before he had been called such a creature.   
  
"Grima..." she said gently, her voice like a soothing balm to his frayed, nearly shattered nerves. "I do not invite you here, night after cold and restless night, to threaten you or harangue you. Those thoughts are farthest from my mind. But the castle is cold and dark of late, and I can feel the weight of every one of the years spent in this castle upon me each night. This place has become a prison, a dank and dreary tomb for the dying, the dead, and those too foolish to know they belong to either."   
  
"I want companionship, Grima, nothing more. Someone to talk to and share my tiny fortress of light and warmth against the cold and the darkness. Some small conversation, stilted and forced as it may be, and a voice besides my own in here. Singing becomes wearisome when the only audience is oneself."   
  
There wasn't much the pale man could say to that. She had never, in all the time he could remember knowing her, said so much at once to anyone, much less admitted half of that to anyone, much less to him. It gave him an odd warmth inside, and frightened him more deeply than any threats or curses could have touched.   
  
And still he sat, and drank the cup, and wondered what would happen when Saruman came to claim the Horse lands. 


	2. Helmsdeep and Isengard

Even in her small room's sanctuary, Liriel heard the commotion. She also heard, even smelled something she had not detected in the wind in a very long time; the scent of long riding. Freshly oiled tack-leather, iron new-pounded into shoes, food prepared specifically for long travel, and all of it done in a hurry. Armed men were gathering people in courtyards and in what passed for streets, but even they could not disguise the panic in their voices. There had been some altercation the previous day; she knew, she'd heard. Shouts and alarums had run out, and there had been the sound of fast-running horses, but she didn't know what had happened.   
  
She wondered what was going on.   
  
When the nice young man came to escort her to a horse, she asked him. "Why have there been so many alarums rung of late... this past day I have heard more activity in Edoras than I have heard in this past fortnight all told."   
  
Liriel could feel his eyes on her face, astonished. "Why.. had you not heard? Theoden-king is new-wakened from his possession by the dark wizard Saruman. Gandalf is returned with the King of Gondor and they have brought with them tidings of a great army moving forth from Isengard. The king has ordered that all are to make haste to the fortress of Helmsdeep."   
  
She couldn't manage to hide the gasp in time; fortunately the well-meaning young man put it down simply to shock at the news. So -- poor Grima's two lords had come to odds at last, as she had surmised. It didn't surprise her, that it would happen; she'd known he would be caught in the middle, in that untenable position he had placed himself unwillingly yet unable to do anything else. What surprised her was the depth of protective feeling she felt for the poor man. He had been a true companion to her in her last few days at Edoras.   
  
"Oh, be still..." Liriel said, absently irritated. "I was riding on my mother's pony before you were born, young man. I think I can manage one placid mare." The touch of the horse's breath on her hand was gentle, and despite her bravado she was still very leery of getting on a horse again. It had been a very long time. Still, this horse seemed gentle enough, and would most likely keep to the giant procession that was wending towards Helmsdeep.   
  
"As you say, my lady..." the man said doubtingly. Just to prove him wrong, Liriel reached out with her hands and her senses, ascertaining where the saddle was. Quick as a wink and with only a slight gasp, she leaped into the saddle. The foolish vanities of an old woman, she thought with a mental wince of considerable ache, muscles forced to do tasks abandoned thirty years ago, Still, that'll teach him.   
  
The wind hit her as soon as she was mounted, tearing right through her chest and out the other side of her threadbare cloak. She winced with almost palpable pain, her lungs nearly frozen. Nearly a fortnight of hard riding. Would she be able to endure? She, who had not been outside the castle in nearly a decade? But what choice did she have?   
  
They rode to Helmsdeep.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
"Into the caves. Everyone into the caves!"   
  
They had barely arrived at the great stone fortress. Liriel had sensed the panic in the air from the moment she'd heard the distant growling of the Wargs and their riders, much less when the White Lady of Rohan had gathered the women and children and ridden ahead to Helmsdeep. It had been a hard ride, and she was starting to remember why she never ventured outside the castle anymore. Her breath was rattling in her chest.   
  
She'd known after the first day that she would arrive at the fortress completely incapacitated, if she arrived at all. By the third day she had almost given up hope of life, until the kind young king with the hands of a healer had taken her and given her some tea brewed of leaves that even she did not have a name for. Then the Warg-riders had taken him over a cliff, and there was no more king, no more healing for her. At her request he had kept her pain secret, not that they had healers in the party anyway. No one who could do anything for her.   
  
She almost laughed. It was actually funny, a little... here they were, fleeing the army of orcs and goblins and who knew what else the old wizard had created, and she would not live to be murdered and eaten by them. No, it was the chill that would carry her off, and if she was eaten, well, what of that. Someone might as well have use of her body after she was done with it.   
  
"Here, lady," a woman's voice came through the babble of people, and a hand touched her arm. "You are chilled…" she felt the warmth and weight of a blanket around her shoulders.   
  
"Thank you, lady," Liriel replied graciously, and coughed. It hurt, a fiery pain that was more than she had been expecting, and she tasted bitter copper in her mouth.   
  
"Are you ill?"   
  
It was too late for that; had been too late when she had felt the first blast of cold wind through her chest on the road. But the woman couldn't know that. Neither had she, for a time. "Not for much longer, child," she smiled reassuringly, and patted the woman's hand. The woman left, most likely thinking that Liriel was simply recovering from the winter illnesses that usually had plagued Edoras.   
  
Her mind wandered backwards, to another who had been weakened by the fever that was now killing her. To other nights, warmer and more comfort filled nights of tea and talk and even a little music, when she had the breath for it. It hadn't been joyous, exactly, but it had been a happy time, and she had even been content.   
  
Poor Grima, Liriel thought, not for the first time. What has become of you now?   
  
  
  
  
  
  
Poor Grima was suffering abuse and neglect at the hands of Saruman the White, as he had for many years past. Fetch this, carry that, draw this, stay out of my way you ignorant toad. Curses and reprimands rang in his ears; when Saruman wasn't berating him, he was ignoring him. As though it was his fault the accursed Gandalf had ridden into Edoras and snatched out Theoden from under their very noses. As though it was his fault that Saruman had been cast out from the body of the Horse Lord. As though he had the power to stand against a wizard. He didn't know why Saruman couldn't see that, but mostly supposed it was somehow his fault anyway. It usually was. Poor, stupid Grima. He turned his head to the side and spat in the general direction of Saruman's palantir. That for Saruman and his 'Poor, stupid Grima.'   
  
He had been so much better off at Edoras.   
  
Among other things, he had been virtually the ruler of the roost, there. The mouthpiece of Theoden himself, no one had gainsaid anything from his lips, presuming that he spoke the words of Theoden himself. Up to and including letting that misbegotten whelp Theodred die of his wounds. Even Grima had known the boy might have been saved, had he been brought to what few healers were left immediately, and kept in a room somewhat warmer than the icy halls of the King. A room like the blind woman's, his thoughts betrayed him. He pushed the thoughts out of his mind. The blind woman was likely fled with them all, to Helmsdeep with her, and likely soon to be made into meat for the Uruk-hai. The thought gave him a moment's pause, a moment's concern, as it always did. And then he walked on.   
  
The first time he had seen them, the army of thousands of fighting Uruk-hai, he had been astonished, afraid for the blind, kind lady of Rohan. He had known terror, then, and grief; not his usual sort of terror but fear for another, something entirely new to him. Also new were the cool tears that had tricked down his cheek; cool, yet still warm against his icy, clammy skin. Three tears, and then his sense of self-preservation had reasserted itself. Grima cared for no one, because no one cared for Grima, no matter what they said.   
  
But he had known then, when he had seen the army of foulness, what would be come of the Rohirrim, of the Horse people. And he had known what would become of the White Lady of Rohan, beautiful and forbidding as the winter. And of the blue-eyed Liriel.   
  
Grima shook the thoughts out of his head and shuffled on through the tower of Isengard. He moved, stooped and bunch-backed, through the Palantir room and towards the sanctuary of his own tiny den. At least with Saruman occupied with the battle he had time for a little rest, a little peace, to sooth his aching muscles and bones and try somehow to ease the ailments which always plagued him. He almost fancied, in a brief moment of uncharacteristic wistfulness, that he could hear Liriel's voice on the wind again, hear the soft sound of hot water pouring into a cup, usually some sort of exotic tea which never failed to warm and ease his body. And spirit, if it came to that, though he never liked to think about it. The simple act of being so at ease with another person made him very ill at ease itself. But he could still hear her voice…   
  
The Palantir… it glowed.   
  
He stared into it. It was forbidden to him, and with good reason, but his eyes were captivated by it all the same. It swirled and crackled with energy, the interior of it misting over with gray (unlike when Saruman gazed into it and summoned the flaming lidless eye). And then the mists parted to reveal a labyrinthine set of caves, and he suddenly knew where it was…. Below Helmsdeep.   
  
"No…" he whispered, anticipating what he would see there. He could almost hear the sounds of the slaughter. "No… do not show me this… I beg you, do not show me this…" The Uruk-hai had not yet arrived at the underground caves but he knew it was only a matter of time. He had told Saruman how to breach the sanctuary. "Please… have mercy"   
  
The heartless orb had none, but what came was not what he expected. The view wandered through the caves, as though searching for something, all the while still wreathed in mist. It finally came to rest on a familiar form, blood staining her lips and hair, lying wrapped in blankets on the ground and breathing shallowly, he saw. He saw more than he wanted to, in that regard. Grima had seen enough of death to know when it approached someone, and by the look of her she had barely a few breaths left. It must have been the flight from Edoras, though he could not imagine how the chill had taken her so quickly… and fever, by the hectic look in her bright blue eyes. "No…" he found himself whispering, hands on the table and practically nose to the Palantir (which was ice cold). "No… mercy, please…"   
  
She coughed once. Blood spattered her lips. Her eyes opened slightly, her chest heaved once. And then she lay impossibly limp, impossibly still, her face suddenly appearing as any other sighted person's for the first time since he'd known her.   
  
"No..." it came out in a choked whisper, although he no longer knew who he was trying to reach. "No, please... have pity..." The words tumbled over themselves, sobbing, heartbroken, and he never stopped to wonder at the oddness of it all. Grief wracked his body as the fever never had, and it had not yet occured to him how new these sensations were, except that he could have done without. He didn't think to wonder; he was beyond thought. Pounding the stone and marble table with weakened fists, whispering words over and over till they lost all sense and meaning. "No... mercy.. please... No..." But it was no use... "No... mercy... pity..." For that was exactly what the universe had given him... "No.. please..."   
  
No .. mercy... please... no... No mercy 


	3. The Shire, and Home Again

So many days... so many moons since Isengard. So many moons since Grima's mind, heart, and will shattered into the smallest fragments. He had traveled many leagues with Saruman since, not particularly caring where they went. Most of the time he was not even in his right mind; his eyes were wild, flaring. He had managed to keep his mind clear, for the most part, till Isengard had fell, and then it seemed as if the last vestiges of humanity had crumbled with the tower of magic and stone. All ties to warmth and light had been severed. His body was now so wracked and twisted that it left him in constant pain, a cringing and whining animal. There was no spark of life left in him.  
  
He barely recognized Gandalf, when they encountered him on the road, and Aragorn the young king. He didn't recognize the wizard he had once sworn to curse for upseting what little peace had come to his life, what little importance. It had been Gandalf he had blamed for his turning-out from Edoras, and his brutal flight into exile. He didn't even recognize the wizard now.  
  
"Get up, you idiot!" he heard Saruman shout, and then felt the blow of the staff to his head. "Turn about! If these fine folk are going our way, then we will take another. Get on, or I'll give you no crust for your supper."  
  
It was the old song that Saruman had sung since they had left Isengard. Since Grima no longer cared what physically befell him, it was easy to accept Saruman's torments and beatings. Food was harder to abstain from, so it was the usual threat he received when Saruman actually required him to do something. It was a pitiful existance, but Grima no longer heeded or cared.   
  
"Poor old Grima! Poor old Grima! Always beaten and cursed. How I hate him! I wish I could leave him!" The words spilled out of Grima's mouth, as usual, without him having more than half an idea of what he was saying. Something bad about Saruman, no doubt... something whimpering and puling and weak. He was always weak.   
  
"Then leave him!" said Gandalf.   
  
Grima's eyes flickered, wide and terrified, to Gandalf. He didn't recognize the other wizard, but he recognized his power and magnificence, and it frightened him.   
  
They passed by the fine company, and Saruman stopped to have words with some little folk along the way. Grima paid very little attention to this; his mind was wandering again, back to Isengard and the palantir and the source of all his misery. He was roused from his daymares only by another vicious kick from Saruman, and then they were on their way again.  
  
  
  
  
He should have marked the little folk, the hobbits (as Grima later learned to call them), when he had seen them. He should have remembered their names, their faces, and their swords. So much later, after Saruman had usurped the vally of the little folk and made it his own, corrupted and tainted as everything else he touched (poor Liriel, Grima thought in a brief moment of lucidity), Grima was made to do his dirtiest deeds.  
  
Bury Lotho! Sharkey (for so Saruman was now called) said. Bury Lotho he did, although he was terribly hungry. He managed to catch a rabbit instead, though, a pale and skinny coney that he tore apart with his bare hands and teeth. Kill Lotho! he had said before, and when Grima stabbed the knife into the sleeping body it seemed as though he stabbed Sharkey, and he repeated the motion over and over with much glee. Grima found and killed and buried other hobbits too, at Sharkey's bidding. It became his favorite task; at least he could spend a little time in the woods, and maybe catch something to eat.   
  
He didn't venture near the few hobbit holes that were still inhabited. The scent of tea and bread and a fire was still too painful to remember.   
  
The hobbits finally came and ousted Sharkey. Grima was secretly glad of it, perhaps they would kill him, too. But as much as he longed for the peace of the grave, he was terribly afraid of it as well, and hid in one of the huts until his master called.  
  
"Worm! Worm!" Sharkey called, and out of a nearby hut he came, crawling almost like a dog. "To the road again, Worm, these fine fellows and lordlings are turning us adrift again. Come along!"  
  
Grima slunk after Sharkey, drawing back with a hiss as Sharkey attempted, finally, to kill one of the hobbits. But the mail shirt snapped the dagger, and nothing but bitter words was exchanged between the two. They walked on between the halflings, who were gripping their weapons tightly.  
  
"Wormtongue!" called the hobbit whom Sharkey had stabbed. Grima paused, hearing himself called by someone with a kinder voice, a voice almost like... "You need not follow him. I know of no evil you have done to me. You can have rest and food here for a while, until you are stronger and can go your own ways."  
  
Rest. Food. When had been the last time he had had either of those? So long ago that the words were almost foreign. Too, the hobbit had a look about him, of kindness and compassion mixed with the wisdom of ages, that reminded him of a long ago lady in what seemed a different life, a better life. He looked back at the hobbit, and contemplated remaining.  
  
"No evil?" Sharkey cackled, breaking Grima's thoughts into pieces again. "Oh no! Even when he sneaks out at night it is only to look at the stars. But did I hear someone ask where poor Lotho is hiding? You know, don't you, Worm? Will you tell them?"  
  
Grima cowered, shrinking from the voice that knew all, that scraped dirt over his grave and buried him alive... now the halflings would kill him for sure, and in most unpleasent ways. "No... no."  
  
"Then I will," said Sharkey. "Worm killed your Chief, poor little fellow, your nice little Boss. Didn't you, Worm? Stabbed him in his sleep, I believe. Buried him, I hope; though Worm has been very hungry lately. No, Worm is not really nice. You had better leave him to me."  
  
Nice. Grima could faintly remember a time when he might have been described as nice, when his company had been deemed 'nice.' And Sharkey had given the orders that had destroyed it all... he glared at Sharkey with wild-eyed hatred. "You told me to; you made me do it," he hissed.  
  
Sharkey only laughed. "You do what Sharkey says, always, don't you, Worm? Well, now he says: follow!"   
  
He kicked Grima in the face, knocking him over, then turned and stalked off. Grima lay there in the dirt and dust, blood seeping from his lip, whiteness in front of his eyes. He thought of another time, in the fog and mist and dankness of a cavern, and other blood-flecked lips. He thought of the wizard who had been the cause of it all.  
  
With a wild cry, Grima leaped up. A knife leapt to his hands so easily that he was hardly aware he gripped it before he had jerked Sharkey's head back and slit his throat from ear to ear. Blood gushed over his hands; he ignored it. The lady avenged, he ran down the lane, shrieking what he might have thought was a battle cry.  
  
He never felt the three arrows that struck him down before he had gotten more than ten paces.  
  
  
  
  
The pain was gone. It was the first realization he had, the second was that he seemed to be in a land of fog and mist and distant song. Edoras, it almost seemed. Was he back in Edoras? He must be, he must have fallen asleep on the road after a short journey. How foolish of him. Theoden-king would need him; he should not stay out so late. Grima slowly got to his feet, still careful of a body that no longer needed any care, and started to walk forward. He must have been late indeed, because here was someone come looking for him with a lantern.   
  
"Grima... Grima! There you are..." Liriel, of the bright blue eyes, was standing at the crossroads outside the city. "You were a day late, we had just gone to look for you."  
  
Grima smiled, hesitantly and shyly, remembering very little of the journey he was supposed to have made. "I think I must have been asleep for a very long time..." he ventured.  
  
"Silly Grima," she returned affectionately, lacing her arm through his. "The king asks after his advisor, worrying that something might have happened to you. He was to have sent Eomer and an entire eored after you, but I persuaded him to let me find you instead. Now come on... if we hurry, there will be time for chai before supper..."  
  
Grima smiled, and sighed contentedly, and disappeared into the mists. 


End file.
